Discarding Theseus
by mayachain
Summary: Her life in Paris isn't enough for Ariadne anymore. Hints of Ariadne/Arthur/Eames inside.


**Discarding Theseus**

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When she comes home, it's as if the last few weeks have been a dream.

The evidence is still there, right inside the tiny hole in a wall she calls an apartment. A few sketches in the trash can, the half-empty bottle of wine Arthur handed her as she went home that one night, the scarf Eames complimented that'd been too warm for Sydney. Her suitcase. In a few says, there will be Saito's money in her bank account, too, and she'll have to find out how to handle sudden affluence, won't she?

But other than that, it's like she woke up from this big adventure and now her former life is hitting her in the face like a bucket of cold water.

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There are classes to attend. Professor Miles moved a lot of mountains to guarantee she had the time she needed. She'd felt flattered back then, validated by his seeing enough potential in her to ease her way. Having seen ghostlike dream representations of his grandchildren, she gets that the Professor's motives weren't exactly altruistic, but still _she_, Ariadne, had been the one he'd picked. He'd trusted _her_ out of all his students with Cobb's future.

The time he had carved out for her is up now.

During the next few weeks, she is so busy preparing for exams she can hardly breathe. Designing the mazes for the capital-j Job had been good practice, but she has to remind herself again and again that the buildings she's handling now are bound to and by rules.

Before she met Dominic Cobb, she was so excited about the impending end of her studies. Now, there are only a few months left, yet the days seem to pass at a snail's pace. Saito's money – her money – means she doesn't have to consider her student loans, could get a better apartment, could move wherever she wants. In theory.

Ariadne used to love Paris. Now, every day she wakes up, everything looks the same. Wherever she'd chose to go in this beautiful city, it'd look the same, so unmallably the same, just like her apartment, and she hates it.

She wonders if Professor Miles notices.

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The few times her schedule allows it, she goes out with her friends. They are happy to have her back, ask questions about where she's been and speculate, later, extensively on why she only ever wears that one scarf anymore. She wants to tell them so badly, but she can't, she can't.

Seeing Robert Fischer's face on the news, she wants to say, _I did that, me and this guy Cobb and Arthur and Saito and Yusuf and Eames_, but she can't do that, either. What little she _can_ tell her friends about her days in Sydney and L.A. feels horribly insufficient.

On such nights, she wants to call Arthur, but provided the number he gave her is even in use anymore, she can do that least of all.

_No contact after we walk away._ Ariadne doesn't know what he had planned to do afterwards, regrets not asking the question, now. But this much, _no contact whatsoever_, both he and Eames had made abundantly clear.

During preparation for the Job, she had placated her friends by brandishing the term 'trade secrets', and it had been _fine_, but now there's this huge part of her life that she can't tell anyone about, and the only people who know what happened to her three levels down are so far out of her reach they might as well not be real.

She hadn't counted on how much she would _miss_ them.

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She passes students who only make it through exams by taking uppers and wants to have Yusuf do tests on the pills, tell her if they're safe. Or she'll walk past a group of British tourists on her way to school and break into a run, fighting the urge to call Eames.

She wants to see the real calm, secretly smug expression on Saito's face, not just the too collected front he presents to the journalists.

Even if they never treated her like one, she knows she must have seemed like just a little girl to them. A competent enough architect, sure, but still incredibly young and innocent, a virtual stranger to their world. She can't but wonder if she imagined it, the kisses inside someone's dream, the derision that wasn't a sign of dislike after all, the brush of fingers against her neck. If there was ever anything to any of it.

More often than not, she finds herself drawing structures that would crumble in the real world. Ariadne loves being an architect, still loves the creative process and the precision required, will always love it, but it's hard to concentrate.

She could look up Cobb, she supposes. He is the one with a house somewhere in the United States, a landline, a steadfast home. But he is also not the one she really wants _and_ the one with two small children who haven't yet started school, whose young lives have been uprooted enough. Ariadne doesn't know if he'll be able to stay away from Dreaming forever, but she doesn't want to be the one to disturb him.

The emptied bottle of Arthur's wine becomes a fixture on her windowsill.

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On the day of her final exam, there is an unfamiliar scarf wrapped around the handle of her front door. Heart hammering, she checks the entire 92.2 m³ for signs of anyone having been inside, knowing all the while that she wouldn't find any if someone had been.

He wouldn't. He – whichever he – wouldn't have broken in, wouldn't do that to her because he'd know how it would make her feel.

For the first time since her first week back, she wraps a hand around her totem.

_No contact whatsoever_.

Neither ever said for how long.

She lets herself sink down on her bed and examines the scarf, tries to guess which one of them it was. The colors seem to be more Eames' style, but then again, it'd clearly been selected to please _her_, and she never really met dressed-down Arthur.

But she'd _like_ to.

For a moment, she imagines them shopping through a souq together, each shooting the other's suggestions down as they look for a gift for her. It makes her smile before she forces herself to let the image go. Exams are over. She has a party to prepare for.

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A few days later, she is still dizzy from all the graduation hugs she received when she gets a text message from an unknown number. MINOTAUR SELLING TIX TO WONDRLAND. Before she can fully process it, her phone beeps again. IF YOU WANT.

It could be a hoax. It could be a trap. It could be anything, really, or anyone except who she wants it to be.

But it isn't.

I WANT TO, she texts back. The smile forming in her bedroom mirror threatens to break her face.

It is time to dream.

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End file.
